Instant Heat

As we aproach the coldest part of winter and people struggle to heat their homes we need to look at some simple ways to quickly and easily heat at least one room of the house in the event of a sudden cold snap and we do this by using thermal mass to our advantage and this works by heating some thermal mass up and it emits heat for hours, remember the old electric storage heaters, they used thermal mass and were quite effective if used correctly.

Before we begin I would suggest the codicils of open flames inside a room so observe the essentials of common sense with regard to combustible or flammable materials near the heater and other essentials such as adequate ventilation and carbon monoxide.

To make this heater you need thermal mass and this comes in the form of one slab and several bricks as these create the thermal mass and the more bricks you can heat the longer and hotter the emitted heat will be, so how do the old storage heaters work? basically they were steel containers with an elecrical heating element fitted and it was partially filled with stones to act as the thermal mass and then it was filled with oil to above the level of the stones or thermal mass, thr heating element worked by creating heat which heated the oil up and the heated oil transferred some of his heat into the stones which held it for several hours as the heating element was either on a switch or timer and only came on during the night on the old Economy 7 tariff. This shut off with either a timer or thermostat and this gave the element time to heat the oil and then the oil time to heat the stones and it would emit heat for most of the day and this syatem works in exactly the same way.

You begin with a concrete slab and stand it on a solid surface and on something so it doesn't damage or scratch it and you take 4 bricks and stand them around the edge of the slab with their inside corners touching; you do this by building another square on top of your first square but at 45 degrees to the first row so they cross the first row corners and limit the escaping of any heat, you now build a third row of bricks into a square but remobe one of the bricks as this is your chimney and finally you put two or three bricks across the top of your opening to seal it, you have now built your thermal mass and while the bottom slab does not get hot the higher up your brick thermal mass you get the hotter the bricks become and emit useful heat for many hours.

Your burners can be anything you want but I tried two methods and the first was tuna 2 tins half filled with isopropyl alcohol; the tins were emptied and their contents eaten and the tins were fully cleaned and dried, they were half filled with alcohol and stood inside the thermal mass stack and onto the bottom slab, they were lit and the upper two or three bricks were replaced and all these bricks were heated up from the flames and a top opening window was opened during the combustion stage to allow the little smoke being emitted, and the carbon monoxide to escape and allow sufficient air in for combustion and as the tuna tin burners burned for around 30 minutes they really heated the top bricks.
Once the tins burned out the window was left for a couple of minutes before being closed and the bricks really heated the room up and the room temperature soon shot up and they emitted useful heat for several hours.

Burner 2 is the candle type and uses two large candles to heat the thermal mass and I prefer the wide candles in glasses as they are safer but need to burn for longer to heat the bricks up but work just as well.

Just a word of caution using home made stoves, a month ago i made a
methanol heater as seen here; https://youtu.be/JGVZVCU8FGE
The carbon wick i bought did not work so i made a homemade one,
there must have been a slight gap at some point as when i lit it,
it exploded in my face and i had to make my way as quickly as poss
from the greenhouse to the kitchin with my head a ball of flames.
Paramedic talked me into going to hospital,sat in A&E for 4 hours
with the skin hanging off of my face.& blured vision in one eye.
I refused all attempts to have various things inserted into me,and
resisted all suggestions to be sent to the burns unit some 60 miles away.
Fortunatly i heal quickly and everything as back to normal now.

Have just bought a diesel heater (not installed it yet) so if i dont post
again for some time you will know i have done something stupid again.

Thank you both

These Chinese diesel heaters work fine and you can use several fuels with them and they do need installing correctly so take the time to do this and periodically give it full heat for 30 minutes to burn deposits off the heating elements.

Mate owns a taxi company with taxis, minibuses and buses and he has two larger ones heating his workshop and even with snow and frost it remains warm.

When the temps where -10 I burried my buckets of water in the muck heap as all the water was frozen for well over 2 weeks .. it was just at the surface with dustbin lids on top on a bit of muck chucked on ....
It's a well known trick in the horsey world but I've also seen a joint of beef cooked in an old pressure cooker in a muck heap..
It did get me thinking wether we could use the heat from muck heaps to heat homes not nessaceraly hot but aired ..
By piping in heat with an inline fan like used in the " growing" set ups ..
Not very technically minded but a good muckheap gives off a lot of heat and heat rises ..
Most horse yards want it gone so if a home has outside room there must be a way and muck is free if you can transport it ..
You could even heat water to an extent ..
Just a thought ..

Yes the muck heap gets quite hot, you can see the steam rising from it in the winter! I've seen some sort of prepped bricks made from horse manure for log burners, supposed to burn longer than wood I think! Didn't they used to live above their animals in some parts as the body heat rises up.

That's correct they did ..
I also like a deep litter bed ..
I have this for my rescue guinnea pigs and my old goat as the old bedding rots down in a foot deep and new bedding is put on as a dry layer to lay on the rotting bedding creates central heating ..
Most guinnea pig owners would slander me for doing this with their immaculate ice boxes but my guinnea pigs water never freezes ..
A few on this forum inc myself burn horse muck in briquettes ..
It's free and yes it burns well ..

I have yet to get a log burner but will certainly look into it when I do. I could never deep litter as my lad was very messy and heavy footed, would always mess it up, and I'm a little OCD! But I don't see a problem re your guinea pigs, it's whatever works.

I don't deep litter horses ..
Infact I have worked out the cheapest way to bed them down is I buy big hestons in direct from farmer and I pile straw up in the corner not on the floor ..
As you will know horses spend very little time laying down .
So they do their buisness just at the edge of the pile so their stable floor is completely dry ..
But if and when they want to lau down they can lay on the pile ..
This works brilliantly ..
No thrush from urine soaked bedding either ..
I watch most on our yard spending £25 a week on shavings to throw it all away ..
Mine cost £10 a month this way ..
And unlike some on my yard they don't have thrush ..
It also means they're more like to poo all in one pile so easy to gather up for burning
I've just realised I really do over think everything ..

This is quite intresting ..
Water at 60° for 6 months ..
And more

https://www.permaculturenews.org/2011/12/15/the-jean-pain-way/

The temp in the muckheap just now ..
Inserted in the part in use

memegirl777 wrote:When the temps where -10 I burried my buckets of water in the muck heap as all the water was frozen for well over 2 weeks .. it was just at the surface with dustbin lids on top on a bit of muck chucked on ....
It's a well known trick in the horsey world but I've also seen a joint of beef cooked in an old pressure cooker in a muck heap..
It did get me thinking wether we could use the heat from muck heaps to heat homes not nessaceraly hot but aired ..
By piping in heat with an inline fan like used in the " growing" set ups ..
Not very technically minded but a good muckheap gives off a lot of heat and heat rises ..
Most horse yards want it gone so if a home has outside room there must be a way and muck is free if you can transport it ..
You could even heat water to an extent ..
Just a thought ..

Nice way to heat your greenhouse.

Sam97 wrote:I have yet to get a log burner but will certainly look into it when I do.  I could never deep litter as my lad was very messy and heavy footed, would always mess it up, and I'm a little OCD!  But I don't see a problem re your guinea pigs, it's whatever works.

2 parts pulped wood, two parts shavings and one part muck and it doesn't smell. Add the muck when you put the paper and wood in for pulping as it works better if you also pulp the muck.